White Oak Independent School District

After the first school burned in 1885, Andrew J. Tuttle and his father-in-law John Bumpus organized local men to build another, according to Gregg County's TXGenWeb history of White Oak. Pleas Harris and Kaleb Bumpus gave land near a spring, and Tuttle and Bumpus donated the lumber. Bumpus noticed two white oak saplings beside the finished school, and the community took its name from them. The page counts three large sawmills in the late 1800s and 12 to 15 families by 1884. White Oak incorporated in September 1957.

What the plaque says

White Oak Independent School District The small community of White Oak grew up around a one-room school built in the 1880s. After the first school building burned in 1885, local families worked to erect a new one-room school, which also was used for religious services. By 1912 it was replaced with a two-room building. After oil was discovered in East Texas in the 1930s, the school became overcrowded with the children of families who came to the area in search of black gold. The community constructed a modern brick facility in 1933, and in 1937 the first senior class graduated from White Oak School. Facilities were added as needed over the years. New administration, elementary and middle school were erected in the 1980s. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Tyler State Park — 25 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 26 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• Cherokee Trace — 0.7 mi
• Point Pleasant — 2.2 mi
• Gregg County Discovery Oil Well, F. K. Lathrop A-1, Aransas Fuel Oil Co. — 2.3 mi
• Shiloh Baptist Church — 2.9 mi